Crime and Deviance - Globalisation, Green Crime, Human Rights and State Crime Flashcards
Define globalisation.
Held et al (1999): ’the widening, deepening and speeding up of world wide interconnectedness in all aspects of life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual’.
Give 4 causes of globalisation.
- New communication and transport technologies
- Collective action problems
- Globalised media
- Global trade
Castells (1998) and the worth of the global criminal economy:
The global criminal economy is worth over £1tn per year.
Give 4 facts about sex tourism
Sex tourism is the practice of foreign, often Western, tourists travelling to developing countries to engage in sexual activities in exchange for money
- One of the most common location is Thailand, where it makes $6.4bn a year
- 250,000 people engage yearly, 90% being men
- It often goes hand-in-hand with sex trafficking, with UNICEF estimating 2mn children are exploited annualy, with a total of 4.8mn people trapped worldwide
Give 4 facts about international terrorism
International terrorism is the use of violence and fear to force governments to comply with certain policy demands
- Since 1970, there has been over 200,000 terrorist incidents
- It has multiple theorised causes: greater awareness of economic disparities between countries, resentment of Wester foreign policy and its effects, etc.
- As the world becomes more connected, cyber terrorism is becoming an increasing problem, such as with the 2013/4 Yahoo data breach
Give 4 facts about the international drug trade
The international drug trade inolves the production, transportation, distribution and sale of illegal narcotics
- It is worth up to $500bn annually and is responsible for 1-2% of the GWP
- Some countries rely on the drug trade economically, 20% of the Colombian population working in cocaine production
- Mephamphetamines make up anywhere from 25-50% of trafficked drugs
What are the supply and demand sides of the global criminal economy?
The demand side is often developed, liberal countries that have laws against the behaviours that people seek, like drug abuse or secual child abuse.
The demand side is often developing countries that lack the regulation, police control, or liberal legislation to stop them, with the illegal economy as a preferable alternative to poverty with high profit margins and low costs
Outline cocaine production in Colombia.
20% of Colombians work in the production of cocaine, promoted by the loss of funds for local paramilitary groups after the Cold War.
Beck (1992) and risk society:
Globalisation has increased the fear of risk in late modern society, as well as people’s feelings of disagency due to the sheer size of global problems like terrorism or global warming, creating ‘global risk consciousness’. This causes governments to respond with harsher social control, over things like borders or cultural diversity with assimilationist policies, especially after 9/11.
How does the media affect ‘global risk consciousness’?
The media exacerbates fear as it creates moral panics (Cohen (1972)) about certain threats to capitalise on engagements; for example, 1/3 of coverage on migrants presented them as a threat to the UK.
Taylor (1997) and the two new opportunities for crime:
Globalisation has created crime on both ends of the spectrum:
- MNCs are able to move their corporations to lower-regulation countries, thus increasing unemployment, with governments largely unable to intervene due to the Washington Consensus - this leads to high levels of relative deprivation that lead to w/c crime
- Deregulation of global markets is ripe for elite exploitation, through insider trading, tax avoidance, fraudulent claims of subsidies from IGOs, etc.
Give a criticism of Taylor (1997) and the two new opportunities for crime.
Globalisation may also make getting away with crime more difficult, 116 countries have extradition treaties with the US and things like European Arrest Warrants have been used in the EU to crack down on terrorism, such as with the Berlin Market bombers.
Roth and Friedrichs (2015) and ‘crimes of globalisation’:
Economic IGOs like the IMF and the WTO are dominated by capitalist countries (such as the US having a veto in the IMF) and impose neoliberal ‘structural adjustment programmes’ via conditional loans, thus allowing Western corporations to expand into developing countries but often causing crime due to exploitation.
Cain (2010) and the ‘global state’:
The IMF and the World Bank act as a ‘global state’, not doing anything illegal themselves but causing widespread harm through things like imposing austerity measures.
Give a criticism of Roth and Friedrichs (2015) and ‘crimes of globalisation’
Neoliberal economic policy has helped many developing countries escape poverty, Vietnam’s Doi Moi reforms in the 80’s opened it up to foreign direct investment and global trade, as well as trade agreements like CPTPP - unemployment 1/3 1997 levels in 2011 and 9th lowest prison population in Asia. However, it has still seen crime rise, the prison population increasing by 66%.
Hobbs and Dunningham and criminal organisations:
The way organised crime is organised is different in a globalised world, increasingly it is composed of loose-knit networks of individuals seeking opportunities, connected by individuals with global contacts that act as ‘hubs’; they contrast this with the large-scale, hierarchical ‘Mafia’-style criminal organisations of the past.
How is crime ‘glocal’?
Hobbs and Dunningham argue that criminal organisations are largely rooted in their local context, with global connections, meaninsg that the actual crime will vary from place to place but be influenced by global conditions like demand for drugs.
Glenny (2008) and the new oligarchs:
After the fall of the Soviet Union, wealthy individuals were able to use their funds to buy up cheap goods from recently deregulated Soviet markets and sell them for huge profits overseas; however, the collapse also meant high levels of disorder that the new ‘oligarchs’ wished to protect their wealth from.
Glenny (2008) and ‘McMafia’:
The new oligarchs turned to the rising ‘mafias’ made up of ex-KGB and convicts; however, these new organisations were different to past mafias, that had ethnic and family ties, as well as clear hierarchies. These groups were purely economic, functioning more like businesses than traditional criminal organisation; for example, the ruthless Chechen mafia soon ‘franchised’ it operations, selling the name to local protection rackets.
What is the significane of the ‘McMafia’?
Glenny (2008) shows how globalisation can create new ruling classes, new criminal organisations and how the two can help perpetuate and increase one another’s power, such as by increasing the connections of the organisations or protecting the ruling class.
